A Stop-Over in Guilin

Guilin is the capital of Guanxi Province and although it is very important to the Province of Guanxi it has little importance for travelers. We used Guanxi as our base for exploring the Dragon’s Backbone Rice Terraces, but in retrospect we could have easily done it from better locations. Namely Yangshuo, but that’s another blog post, let me not get too far ahead of myself.

Dumplings and French Fries to Celebrate Spring Festival

The day we arrived in Guilin was “Chinese New Year’s Day” or the first day of Spring Festival, naturally everything was closed or extremely expensive. We decided to explore the area and found ourselves wandering the streets. We could tell that the night before had been quite the celebration in Guanxi as all the streets were dyed red by the fireworks. To our surprise we stumbled upon the world’s tallest copper pagoda.

Katie, Katelyn, and I at the pagoda. 

By far the highlight of Guanxi was definitely our day trip to the Dragon’s Backbone Rice Terraces. We took a private van on a terrifying trip to the town. We literally passed four car accidents on our way. The fog was so thick we could barely see thirty feet in front of us. We rounded hairpin turns far faster than we ever would have in America. I can’t tell you how many times I wondered if we would survive the trip. I’m not a religious person, but if I was I’m pretty sure I would have prayed the whole way.

Once we were there our horror was quickly forgotten as we came into the most picturesque little town complete with fog. Now for anyone in the west fog is just fog, and you might not understand why it astonished me so much. Here in China fog is generally smog and it chokes you as you go outside. But here it was fresh and clean fog. Amazing beautiful fog, I love fog.

Look at the fog!

An awesome bridge.

I wish I taught English in a town like this.

The most picturesque little restaurant

Climbing the actual terraces you had to be careful where you placed your feet as the slippery mud could easily send you tumbling down the mountains.  Yet the feeling of fresh air in my lungs was so elating that I often forgot the fear of death that should have been engulfing me.

There are times in China when I see things that I learned about in history class in America. Unfortunately I was never really interested in Chinese history so those times are few and far between. Seeing the rice terraces was one of those moments.